Hugo Boss (businessman)

Hugo Ferdinand Boss (8 July 1885 to 9 August 1948) was a German businessman who founded the fashion house Hugo Boss. Born in Metzingen in the Kingdom of Württemberg, he apprenticed as a merchant, worked in a weaving mill in Konstanz and in 1908 took over his parents' lingerie shop in Metzingen. In 1923 he founded his own clothing company in Metzingen and opened a factory in 1924, initially with two partners, producing shirts, jackets and later work clothing, sportswear and raincoats. In the 1930s the company produced uniforms for the SA, the SS, the Hitler Youth and later the Wehrmacht. Boss was an active member of the Nazi Party from 1931, and the company used forced labour during the war, for which it issued an apology in 2011. After the war he was fined and lost the capacity to run a business, and his son-in-law Eugen Holy took over the ownership and running of the company. He died in 1948.